can i search for mac addresses on google maps

This is self-limiting because it takes manpower, which is a highly limited resource. Police are allowed to follow someone without practically any oversight. The current laws don't deal with situations like this.Īn example is police tailing. However there are lots of things which are legal because they seem harmless in the small scale, but which become privacy concerns on the large scale.

It's true that this seems legal in the US. Although if ol' Tony finds out before the cops do, you're probably even worse off. Sorry about this, but unless you speak Italian and ol' Tony tells you what my favorite word or phrase is, I can't give you an IPv4 addres!' Any situation where network encryption is either bypassed or broken without the network owner's knowledge and permission is nefarious outright, regardless of intention, and that should most definitely be a criminal offense. Perhaps if someone learns that their pipe is being used against their knowledge, they could (and should) take civil action to force that person to pay for what he's been freeloading on, but I digress.įor someone who actually breaks in to an encrypted AP (and yes, WEP counts), consider that WEP might be like a retarded-midget bouncer who'll believe you if you lie to him, whereas WPA could be, 'My name is Linksys. Further, based on my very crude analogy, I also don't think that 'unauthorized' connection/use of an unprotected/unconfigured AP should be a criminal offense either. Here in the States, logging that you heard such a declaration rightly isn't against the law. No, no, I haven't been told to exclude anyone who doesn't know my favorite word or phrase! If you like, I can give you an IPv4 address! You can tell me apart from other folks with the same name because I'm XX:YY:ZZ:AA:BB:CC! Noting it down is absolutely not a privacy threat - not anymore than the broadcast itself is in the first place! Well, guess what, that's precisely what a wireless access point does, if you tell it to broadcast its ESSID! It's not even something of the 'unlocked door' variety, it's literally actively transmitting this information for everyone to hear. with respect to websites being crawled when they don't want it to happen) that 'if you put it in public, it's public'. On Slashdot, it has been said countless times in the past (e.g. I've also heard that iPad (at least the non-3G variety) also uses WiFi geolocation. It's used in such capacity in Android, for example. There is no reason for Google to record the MAC addresses of devices.Īctually, they do have a reason - it's called 'WiFi geolocation', and can be used in conjunction with cell towers to pinpoint one's position much more precisely than towers alone can do.

Sorry but recording all MAC addresses? Google's 'Do no evil' just went out the door.

Can i search for mac addresses on google maps